Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Another Failure to Master Percentages

Here we have Mother Jones's Tim Murphy, who presumably is an adult capable of filing taxes, claiming that

"Romney ultimately squeaked past Santorum by eight votes on Tuesday day night, in what was by far the closest margin in the history of the Iowa caucuses—30,015 to 30,007, good for a .000065 percent advantage."

Should columnists have to take a refresher course in grade school mathematics before their editors allow them to embarrass their magazines like that?

(There were 122,255 total votes. A margin of 8 votes is .0065%, not .000065%. Murphy forgot to multiply by 100.)